Chicken Stir Fry 2.0

     Getting home by 6pm at the absolute earliest really puts a strain on what I can make for dinner if I want to be done eating before 7pm. Stir fry is a quick and easy dinner idea that I have made before so a lot of this post will repeat my prior attempt. I made a few changes that I had hoped would be for the better but not all of them ended up not turning out the way I wanted them to. I began as I did before by boiling some jasmine rice and dropped the heat to a simmer while the chicken and vegetables cooked. I only seasoned the chicken with salt and pepper this time and left out the five spice.

     I let the chicken sit a while, while I started on the vegetables. I tried a different mix of frozen stir fry vegetables this time and liked this one better. Asian stir fry is the name of the mix and it contains water chestnuts, baby corn, snap peas, red peppers, and mushrooms. I sautéed the vegetables in a tablespoon of olive oil until they were heated through. Next, I added the chicken in with the vegetables and cooked it until it was no longer pink. I also bought a different sauce to go with the chicken and vegetables since I know Christine doesn’t really care for the traditional stir fry sauce. We agreed upon a Caribbean style sweet and tangy sauce which sounded good. Upon opening the bottle, it seemed a bit watery and not as syrupy as the previous sauce. I added it to the chicken-vegetable mixture and allowed the sauce to reduce to see if I could get a better consistency.

     The sauce never tightened up and I didn’t want to over cook the chicken so I had to go with what I had. Like before I laid some rice on each plate as a base and placed the chicken and vegetables on top. The chicken, vegetables, and rice were all cooked fine but the taste just wasn’t there. Leaving out the five spice took away the ginger flavor that was masked by the stir fry sauce last time. I still think the chicken needs something more but haven’t found what that is yet. The sauce that we went with was kind of bland and not saucy enough for my taste. I guess I’m used to the heavy sauces often found in Chinese cooking.

Rating: Fair – Some changes worked but others didn't.